Pinned Air Combat for COW1.5v- Guide for dealing some (in)decent damage

BMfox · Jan 13th 2021, 6:46pm

Air Combat for COW1.5v- Guide for dealing some (in)decent damage

This is the 1.5 update from the original guide written by @Paramunac posted Nov 3rd 2016. Also, a big shout out to @General Nightman who wrote the guide to planes and @MadMike69 his explination about advanced air mechanics.

Different kinds of planes:

Interceptor: scouting unit, anti-aircraft unit used against all types of bombers, reveals stealth units such as militia, anti-tank and commando’s, also effective against artillery and armoured cars in the first few days of the game.
Tactical bomber: used against unarmoured units (Infantry branch mostly)
Attack bomber: used against armoured units (Armour branch mostly)
Naval bomber: specialize in destroying ships and submarines. Naval Bombers are the only unit that can spot submarines lurking around your coasts, and they are exceptionally good at destroying transports.
Strategical bomber: anti building, useful to take out fortifications, airstrips, … Also good for scouting due to its long range.
Rocket fighter: The fastest air unit (excluding rockets) rocket fighter. The rocket fighter is an extremely powerful fighter, with incredible speed. However, its range is very poor, and it can only be upgraded to level 2
Nuclear bomber: powerful against all types of ground units and buildings. Nuclear bombers cannot be escorted and can easily be shot down if the enemy has a good AA value.

Ways of dealing damage:

Different types of planes are good against different targets. Interceptors are good against all other planes, tactical bombers are good against land units and convoys (both land and sea convoys), strategic bombers are good for destroying buildings, naval bombers are good for scouting and destroying subs and sea convoys and have some potential against warships. However, it is almost always good idea to combine more types of units into single group to increase survivability and effectiveness. If you don't already know this, check unit stats and read them carefully. I will assume that all who read rest of the text are familiar with strength of planes again other units.

Two most common ways to deal damage using planes are using attack function to directly attack some enemy group for 100% damage and patrol function to deal 50% damage to all enemy groups inside patrol area every 15 minutes, but there is a lot more ways to do it.

Direct attack is pretty simple. Order group of your planes to attack enemy group of any type in its range, it will do 100% damage to it and receive 100% damage from it, but, there are some situations where calculation changes a little. First, if enemy has one or more air groups patrolling in a way that their patrol area covers the location where enemy group (the one which is being attacked by your air group) is positioned, that air groups will do 100% damage to your air group while receiving 0% damage from it. Second, air groups have area of effect (AoE) damage. It is very small area, but still worth the mention because if more than one enemy group (excluding air groups currently in air) is very close to each other, they will defend against planes together (your air group attack to any of those groups will be considered like an attack to all of them at once, meaning that it will be spread over them, while their defensive damage is sum of all defending groups). This means that enemy can't just split some group few moments before it gets attacked in order focus all attacking damage to just one of the groups.
Patrolling groups (except in special case which was mentioned above) do 50% damage every 15 minutes. Tricky question here is to who will be the target and in which cases will the patrolling groups receive damage. Damage will be dealt to two different categories of enemy groups, first includes enemy patrol groups, with condition that your and enemy patrol areas overlap and second includes all other groups (including air groups which are not patrolling), with condition that your patrol area covers the location where those enemy groups are currently positioned. If only first category is present, your patrol groups will do 50% damage to them and recieve 0% damage every 15 minutes. However, enemy will do the same (15 minutes timers will usually not all start at the same time). If only second category is present, your every patrol group will do 50% damage to them and receive 50% damage from them every 15 minutes. This also means that even plane groups (excluding patrols) who are just standing on land (their current airbase) or flying around will do 50% defensive damage every time some enemy patrol group finishes patrol cycle (when it finishes one iteration of its 15 minute timer) over the position where they are currently located. If both categories are present, your damage is spread among them.

When to use attack mode or patrol mode:

Important to know is that when refuelling, planes have only 25% and they do no defensive no damage. In other words when refuelling your planes are vulnerable as they take four times more damage. Just be careful if enemy uses some patrol groups to protect them or had some groups ready to counterattack when your groups return for refuelling.

For close targets attack mode is the most effective because you can deal more damage in the same amount of time. However, it’s as stated above risky business.

"Direct attack v.s. Patrolling: They are used in different situations, direct attacks is recommended where your stacks have great alpha damage but low continuous damage (AKA a lot of planes but operating from far/low level airfields) or if you calculate that the stack can be one-shotted. Patrolling is used for when you are far away from your base and since it does not need to refuel, can continuously dish out damage." @TomtheBuilder

The patrol cycle should always be favoured:

- You can attack multiple targets within the “red triangle” without refuelling and thus saving a lot of time and not taking the risk of refuelling.
- Planes in patrol mode will take less returning damage from the units they attack than compared with attack mode.

Transporting Planes:

There are two ways to transport planes: truck convoys and air transfer.

Truck Convoys:
Truck Convoys are a slow, low health unit (25 km/h and 5HP each) that transports your planes across the ground to the next airport or city. These transports are vulnerable, they are easily bombed from the air, or attacked by ground troops. Sometimes you have no choice, as in rockets (they can only be transported via the ground) or if your airports are simply out of range. But the safest method is the next one...

Air Transfer:
Air transfer is when your planes fly from airport to airport to get to their next target. When building planes, it is best to create a linked system so your planes can fly safely to their target. To build one, click on your plane with the lowest range. Then, build airports so it can fly from base to base. If you do that, your planes will always be in range.

BMfox · Jan 13th 2021, 6:47pm

Good practises:

Consider SBDE. For planes 100% SBDE is usually when there is at most 10 in one group, above 10 the effectiveness will go down. Depending on the type of enemy groups and the way in which damage is dealt sometimes maintaining maximum SBDE is important.
When patrolling over same target with multiple air groups, make sure they are all in the exact same position (can be easily done by selecting them all together and ordering to patrol over some location) in order to avoid enemy using his patrols to overlap only one of your patrols, kill it easily and continue doing the same to others.
Different kinds of planes have different speed and range. Range of a group is equal to the range of plane with the smallest range of all planes in the group. Same goes for speed. It is a good idea to combine or separate planes from the same group in order to gain benefit from this kind differences when situation allows.
When you see enemy is using direct air attack against some of your groups, move patrol groups in place where they can protect them (deals 100% damage to enemy air groups and kills a lot of planes if done properly). It is enough to cover the group(s) you want to protect even by a little. If in range, you can even use some of those groups to follow enemy groups after they attack and counterattack when they return to refuel.
Combine different types of planes in your groups in order to bring more force (without damaging your SBDE) and make enemy spreads their damage across more units.
When you see enemy is using direct air attack against some of your groups which are near the edge of enemy range, you can (if you have time) move your group just a little behind the edge. If your group is past the edge at the moment of impact, enemy air group will deal no damage, but will still have to return to refuel. Even better, if you used some patrol groups to protect, they will do 100% defensive damage to enemy even if enemy did no damage at all.
As already explained, when enemy has one or more air groups patrolling over some area, that groups will deal 50% of their damage every 15 minutes to all groups inside the area and receive 50% damage from those groups (excluding your own patrols as they will deal damage separately). This can used against him. One way is by moving land (or naval) groups (with a lot of AA defence) inside enemy patrol area. If total AA defence of your groups used this way is large enough so they can inflict more damage to enemy patrol groups than those groups deal to them (HP should also be considered in this calculation), then this is a good way to destroy enemy patrols. Other way is to use your own air groups. Trick is to avoid patrolling over enemy patrols and make sure your air groups are either flying around (looking confused) or standing in airbase, with the condition that they are inside enemy patrol area. Unlike classic patrolling (in which case your patrols deal offensive damage every 15 minutes and don't do any defensive damage when enemy patrols end their patrol cycles), air groups used this way will defend when every enemy patrol group finishes its patrol cycle. While to someone this doesn't seem to make any difference because it just changes time when your patrol groups deal damage, there is reason why in many situations this can do more damage than classic patrolling. That reason is the fact that while patrolling, all damage is spread across all enemy groups but in this case, it is not spread across them and instead it is dealt to all enemy patrol groups separately at the moment when they finish their patrol cycle. Knowing this, you must also be careful when moving your small air groups near enemy patrols as they can easily be destroyed if at the wrong place at the wrong time.
As most players probably know, when you set your relations with someone to war using diplomacy, if no fighting happens (with one exception) and enemy does not set his relations with you to war as well, you can set it back to peace any time you want and there will be no war. Exception is when using patrols. If you set your relations to war and patrol over enemy units, you will deal damage to them and they will respond but you can set relations to peace at any time and there will be peace because patrols don't trigger change of enemy relation with you (unlike all other kinds of fighting - that is why this is an exception). As a bonus (by knowing how patrols work - which is already explained), you can now realize that patroling over enemy patrol groups this way will deal damage to them every 15 minutes but they will deal no damage to you at all (unlike all other groups - which was mentioned previously). This can be used against AI very easily to clear their units before going in (to take undefended capital, for example) or against offline opponents if you have enough patience.
Good way to disable enemy air groups is to destroy (or deal damage bad enough) the airbase they are currently using. This only works if there are no other airbases nearby where they can relocate and keep operating. If that is the case, they will (if in air) immediately fly back to it and (whether they were in air or not) turn them into convoys, making them very weak (as already explained). Best way to do this is by attacking airbase directly with some of the unit groups (rockets and strategic bombers are very effective) or to use spies on military sabotage mission (often more than a few is required).
Protect you air force. Like with all units, it is mandatory that you don't lose your planes if you don't have to. While it sounds obvious, not many people consider this the top priority. Leaving planes near border while being offline is a bad idea. You might want to protect some areas while you are not online, but keep in mind that minor territory loss is far less a problem than losing units while you are not there. Land can be taken and lost, reconquered and lost again, but losing key units in important wars can often be much more damaging. Sacrificing land to regroup and lure enemy far into your territory and counterattack when your units (especially planes) are concentrated is a superior strategy compared to fighting for every piece of land while your forces are separated.

Defending Against Planes:

Attack by the air is a fearsome thing. True accounts from World War 2 reveal the terror that all soldiers and civilians alike felt when being bombed from the air. The best way to defend from air attacks is your own planes, attacking your enemy’s planes or patrolling your planes over your units to protect them. But there are a few more tactics we can use.

Other Planes:
Using other planes to attack other planes will always bring the best results. While some of the methods below will certainly help with diminishing damage on your units, air vs air warfare will bring total victory. The more planes you can pile into the battle is better.

Attacking Airports:
All airplanes fly out of an airport, it's a requirement. Using rockets, strategic Bombers, tactical bombers, spies or ground troops, an level 1 airport can easily be put out of commission. When an airport is destroyed, the planes return to the province and turn into truck convoys, which are easily destroyed. However, planes can switch airports in range when they are patrolling, or returning/going to an attack run.

Anti-Air Units:
Anti-air is designed to combat attacking planes by shooting flak at the aerial invaders. There are two anti-air units in Call of War: infantry Anti-air, and SP Anti-air. Infantry anti-air is quite cheap to build and use, and is a fairly good bargain to build, taking only an industrial complex to build. However, it is a very slow unit and vulnerable to almost every ground unit. SP anti-air is slightly more powerful than infantry anti-air but it costs more, and takes oil. It also requires an IC and infrastructure to build. It is a much quicker unit, though, and goes well with armored or motorized units. All units should travel with some AA.

Regular Troops:
All troops do some damage against attacking planes. While they do not do as much as the AA, they still will deal a little damage against the attackers. Beware, this is no substitute for AA.

Cruisers:
Cruisers are the AA for the sea, doing as much, or even more damage than AA units would on the ground. Battleships, destroyers, submarines and transports are all helpless against naval bombers, and this unit protects them well.

Advanced air tactics and mechanics:

Attack strikes second: If you have two stacks of 10 interceptors that will be targetting a stack in direct attack, all other units within 3km will also get hit. If the defender has 3 stacks planes of mainlybombers with some interceptors as protection and the 3 defender patrols all have same center, they all get hit. If ground units are derectly below patrol center, they get hit before you get to hit. Important to note is that the defender shoosts first so two patrols get a free hit on you then each stack air and ground (10 best units of each) get to defend shoot at you. Only then you shoot against the 3 patrols and ground units if below basically. you get shot at 5 times before you get to shoot 6 if there is ground. So one might be carefull sending two stacks of 10 interceptros into a group of patrolling bombers. Even with the fact that interceptors are triple as strong in direct attack as in defense and bombers being vounerable against interceptors it can get ugly very fast. This is another argument that patrol should always be prefered over attack mode.

Freezy wrote:

What I meant with "attacking airplanes strike second" is not that they are attacked first and then defend afterwards, but that even though they are the attacker their attack damage is applied to enemies after the defense damage is received back. Meaning when the interceptors attacked the unit, they first received all defense damage of units in the vicinity before their own attack damage was applied to all units in the vicinity (thus they were already damaged before their attack damage went out)

Circumvent SDBE: the SDBE is 10 but there's an exploit to it that can be used to make superstacks. The rule is that only 10 best units will engage in a fight but that the damage will be spread over the stack. So if you make a stack of 10 interceptors, 10 attack bombers and 10 tactical bombers. If you attack interceptors your 10 interceptors will be auto selected to fight the enemy. If you attack tanks the 10 attack bombers will be selected. If you attack infantry than it will be the tactical bombers that are being selected. If you get attacked by enemy interceptors it will be your 10 interceptors that will defend. So whatever you do, it will be always the most adapted unit that will do the fighting so you can't make mistakes. Even more important your precious bombers will always be protected. Finally the game changer is that even though only 10 units are fighting, the return damage is split over the entire stack or 30 units in this case. This means that the 10 units that are fighting take 3 times less return damage and will last 3 times longer before they die.

Other guides:

Guide to planes COW Classic written by @General Nightman
Guide to Planes

Air combat for COW Classic written by @Paramunac
Air Combat - Guide for dealing some (in)decent damage

Aircraft guide written by @JesterTheSheep
Every Aircraft And How/When to Use Them

TomtheBuilder · Jan 18th 2021, 4:32am

Even with your “updates”, I still find this guide horribly outdated.
Here is my changes:
1. Jet fighters can be upgraded to level 2
2. Effectiveness of nuclear bombers: they are buggy and sometimes will deal a lot and sometimes very few, only suggested with very high industrial power and to be used as a show of force.
3. Direct attack v.s. Patrolling: They are used in different situations, direct attacks is recommended where your stacks have great alpha damage but low continuous damage (AKA a lot of planes but operating from far/low level airfields) or if you calculate that the stack can be one-shotted. Patrolling is used for when you are far away from your base and since it does not need to refuel, can continuously dish out damage.
4. SBDE: SBDE in 1.5 is rather useless as the game now calculates damage from large stacks differently, before it’s directly affected by stack size, now it’s the most optimized attack that can be carried out by 10 units in a stack. Thus the 10 stack limit DOES NOT apply in the usual way. For maximum efficiency, you should have 10 planes of each type as each type focuses on a single armor branch and you can dish out the maximum damage to each branch of armor.
5. Patrol area: All planes in 1.5 have the same patrol area
Now for extra tips
1. Look at your doctrine: Allies have buffed tactical bombers, Axis have buffed attack bombers and jet fighters, and Pan-Asia have buffed fighters and Naval bombers
2. Speed: Time is your friend (and enemy), tactical bombers are slooooooow, they move at the same speed as strategic bombers, take note of that when transporting aircraft.
Feel free to add more tips in the comments!

BMfox · Jan 18th 2021, 5:05pm

Hi thanks for your feedback, guides are always a work in progres.

1. Edited
2. Added
3. I quoted you
4. SDBE is and stays important. Why would you have 20 units in a stack if only 10 of them are fighting? Better to split the stack and make use of all your units instead of only the half. The only exeption I could think of is a stack of 5MT, 5 mech infantry, 5 SP artillery and 5 SP rocket artillery, where only the 10 arty will bombard or the infantry and tanks will engage in melee combat. I would also advise against 10 interceptors in a stack of 10 bombers as it would slow them down. The best way to protect your bombers is having them in the same patrol cycle but deattached from your bombers.
5. I know, seems a part slipped my attention while editing.

1. I'm not getting into doctrines, that's why I havent mentioned any stats neither. I wanted to go in depth but not too much as I don't want to overcomplicate thinks.
2. Speed is mentioned in good practices 3. but tactical bombers are still much faster than any land unit. It makes sense they are slower then attack bombers as they are bigger in size and heavier.

Biff biddermannn · Mar 16th 2021, 7:08am

nice guide

Chimere · Mar 18th 2021, 11:29am

Wait, is that [still] true :

- "As most players probably know, when you set your relations with someone to war using diplomacy, if no fighting happens (with one exception) and enemy does not set his relations with you to war as well, you can set it back to peace any time you want and there will be no war. Exception is when using patrols. If you set your relations to war and patrol over enemy units, you will deal damage to them and they will respond but you can set relations to peace at any time and there will be peace because patrols don't trigger change of enemy relation with you (unlike all other kinds of fighting - that is why this is an exception). As a bonus (by knowing how patrols work - which is already explained), you can now realize that patroling over enemy patrol groups this way will deal damage to them every 15 minutes but they will deal no damage to you at all (unlike all other groups - which was mentioned previously). This can be used against AI very easily to clear their units before going in (to take undefended capital, for example) or against offline opponents if you have enough patience" ?

- Also, I would not favor patrols against active enemies in target rich areas, because you risk attack more units than you wished you attack. You ll still do 100% damage, but everyone will defend. By focusing on one target, you reduce this risk tremendously. This is particularly true if you fly from an high level airport, allowing fairly quick rotation of attacks.

- One unsung advantage of the Attack Bomber (vs the Tactical) is its speed. it is significantely faster than a tactical bomber, though that difference because much smaller (relatively) at max level. It is also way cheaper to research and a bit cheaper to build, so in my opinion if the resources are limited I would ignore the Tactical bombers initially, instead relying on artillery to kill infantry (which use neither oil nor RM), or armored cars in case you meet motorized.

TomtheBuilder · Mar 18th 2021, 12:29pm

Chimere wrote:

Wait, is that [still] true :

- "As most players probably know, when you set your relations with someone to war using diplomacy, if no fighting happens (with one exception) and enemy does not set his relations with you to war as well, you can set it back to peace any time you want and there will be no war. Exception is when using patrols. If you set your relations to war and patrol over enemy units, you will deal damage to them and they will respond but you can set relations to peace at any time and there will be peace because patrols don't trigger change of enemy relation with you (unlike all other kinds of fighting - that is why this is an exception). As a bonus (by knowing how patrols work - which is already explained), you can now realize that patroling over enemy patrol groups this way will deal damage to them every 15 minutes but they will deal no damage to you at all (unlike all other groups - which was mentioned previously). This can be used against AI very easily to clear their units before going in (to take undefended capital, for example) or against offline opponents if you have enough patience" ?

Still true, but they will do damage to you now

Chimere wrote:

- Also, I would not favor patrols against active enemies in target rich areas, because you risk attack more units than you wished you attack. You ll still do 100% damage, but everyone will defend. By focusing on one target, you reduce this risk tremendously. This is particularly true if you fly from an high level airport, allowing fairly quick rotation of attacks.

Depends on your liking, attacking multiple stacks at once spreads out your damage, useful for slowing enemy units.

Chimere wrote:

- One unsung advantage of the Attack Bomber (vs the Tactical) is its speed. it is significantely faster than a tactical bomber, though that difference because much smaller (relatively) at max level. It is also way cheaper to research and a bit cheaper to build, so in my opinion if the resources are limited I would ignore the Tactical bombers initially, instead relying on artillery to kill infantry (which use neither oil nor RM), or armored cars in case you meet motorized.

It is faster but it has miserable damage against inf even with axis buff. Atk bombers are more expensive, take longer, and use the same resources. If they don't use oil or rares, what do they use? Stalinium? Kryptonite?

Merlin Pin-Pin · Apr 27th 2021, 7:43am

BMfox wrote:

Circumvent SDBE: the SDBE is 10 but there's an exploit to it that can be used to make superstacks. The rule is that only 10 best units will engage in a fight but that the damage will be spread over the stack. So if you make a stack of 10 interceptors, 10 attack bombers and 10 tactical bombers. If you attack interceptors your 10 interceptors will be auto selected to fight the enemy. If you attack tanks the 10 attack bombers will be selected. If you attack infantry than it will be the tactical bombers that are being selected. If you get attacked by enemy interceptors it will be your 10 interceptors that will defend. So whatever you do, it will be always the most adapted unit that will do the fighting so you can't make mistakes. Even more important your precious bombers will always be protected. Finally the game changer is that even though only 10 units are fighting, the return damage is split over the entire stack or 30 units in this case. This means that the 10 units that are fighting take 3 times less return damage and will last 3 times longer before they die.

I am still confused about SBDE.
So far, in 1.0 games the SBDE was quite clear to understand since some players found and shared the exact amount of units of each type ones should stack not to damage SBDE.

But now there is an info on the stacks in-game clearly showing the efficency of your stack. And the rule is quite clear : with a 100% moral the efficency of your troops will go down as soon as there are more than 10 units, whatever what kind of units are stacked toghether.
So 10 interceptors + 10 bombers will have a damage penalty according to the info.
Do you tell me this info is wrong and as long as there are no more than 10 interceptors stacked with 10 other aircraft their SBDE will still be at 100% while attackig an air target ?

(hope I am clear since english ain't my mother tongue)

Hornetkeeper · Apr 27th 2021, 9:12am

The mechanic is simple, but the way CoW explains it may confuse many players.

SBDE only reflects the health of the army and hasn't got anything to do with army size anymore. What the Status Info actually says (check it out) is "damage efficiency decreased because not all units are contributing to the fight".
This means that the efficiency in the status info only reflects how many % of the units are contributing to the damage value of the army.

I tested this in practice. 17 Mot infantry do exactly the same amount of damage as 10.

The top 10 units with the highest damage value against an armour class are used to determine the army's damage value against that armour class.
So, if I have 15 Anti Air and 15 Anti Tanks the damage value of the army against air is the value of 10 AA, against tanks it's the value of the 10 AT.
This means large stacks are surprisingly effective - as they have more health their health percentage and so the damage efficiency goes down slower than for the small stacks.
If you have a large stack you don't want it destroyed, so you make sure you have every counter. That leads to the stacks being slow and easy to go around, which is why large stacks aren't the "meta".

True that for planes 10 attack bombers + 10 tactical bombers + 10 interceptors is very useful though.

Merlin Pin-Pin · Apr 27th 2021, 9:16am

Thanks.

Edit: I am back since I went through a contradictory message to yours.
That's what get me confused, some players still argue the 10 most effective units of a big stack will contribute to the fight without damage penalty (your oppinion), others say that when the stack exceed 10 units there will be a penalty.
Let's quote you and the other message.

Hornetkeeper wrote:

The mechanic is simple, but the way CoW explains it may confuse many players.

SBDE only reflects the health of the army and hasn't got anything to do with army size anymore. What the Status Info actually says (check it out) is "damage efficiency decreased because not all units are contributing to the fight".
This means that the efficiency in the status info only reflects how many % of the units are contributing to the damage value of the army.

I tested this in practice. 17 Mot infantry do exactly the same amount of damage as 10.

The top 10 units with the highest damage value against an armour class are used to determine the army's damage value against that armour class.
So, if I have 15 Anti Air and 15 Anti Tanks the damage value of the army against air is the value of 10 AA, against tanks it's the value of the 10 AT.
This means large stacks are surprisingly effective - as they have more health their health percentage and so the damage efficiency goes down slower than for the small stacks.
If you have a large stack you don't want it destroyed, so you make sure you have every counter. That leads to the stacks being slow and easy to go around, which is why large stacks aren't the "meta".

True that for planes 10 attack bombers + 10 tactical bombers + 10 interceptors is very useful though.

First I understand that 12 interceptors will do the same damage as 10 interceptors. Actually I'd say that a stack of 20 interceptors will do more damage than a stack of 10 interceptors but as they will have a damage penalty they will be less efficient (if you calculate the amount of damage each plane does). I think this is the best way to understand SBDE. In the end of the day it's better to use 2 stacks of 10 interceptors than a big one.

Now here is the other quote, check this out !

Hornetkeeper wrote:

Seriously? That's been a thing for a longer time now. The Status info has been saying 10 since I returned to this game (3 months ago) and I already tested it in a standard 1.5 game a month ago.
I probably misunderstood and you're not talking about standard 1.5 games... but will add it for the clarification anyway.
It's not like only 10 units contribute to the fight.
Instead, when calculating the damage of the army against an armour class the top 10 units with the highest damage against that armour class are used.
That sounds similar but isn't the same.
Let's say you have an army of 10 Infantry and 10 AT and get attacked by 10 infantry and 10 tanks in one stack.
Then, the damage each enemy Infantry unit receives is the damage output of your 10 Infantry vs. infantry class divided by 20 (which is the size of the enemy army).
The damage each enemy tank receives is the damage output of your 10 AT divided by 20.
If you only had 5 AT and 5 Infantry, the damage of your whole army would be used.
To say it another way.
If army A receives damage, unit A in army A receives the damage of the top 10 units in the enemy army, that have the highest damage against unit A, divided by the size of army A.
In this case, more than 10 units are contributing to the fight. The 10 AT fight the tanks, 10 Infantry fight enemy Infantry. If only 10 contributed, they'd have to always be the same 10 units used against any unit in the enemy army.
On the other hand, if army size didn't matter, in both cases the damage output of your 10 AT and 10 Infantry would be used instead of just the 10 AT, or just the 10 Infantry.

Source
Lol, I just realized both quotes are from you. If you read them, don't you find yourself beeing a bit contradictory ? (Or maybe I misunderstand you, english ain't my mothertongue even though I ain't that bad)

We will take a simple example of a stack of 10 interceptors + 10 tactical bombers. We ultimately want to attack/defend against air units, so the interceptors matter more.

What I understand from quote 1 is : It's not a problem if you stack those 10 + 10 because when the fight engage only the 10 interceptors will be taken in account for the damage calculation, and thus without damage penalty. The bombers will be useless except for taking damages and adding HPs to your interceptors.

What I understand from second quote: As there are more than 10 units in your stack all units will be taken in account for the damage calculation, only the 10 interceptors will inflict damages but the bombers will be taken in account as the will apply a damage penalty to your interceptors.

Can you see my point ? I'd be more likely to agree with your second quote as this is exactly what the in-game info shows about stacks.

And I'll come back on one of the setences from your first quote which is wrong to me but as other players metion it, it's confusing.
"The top 10 units with the highest damage value against an armour class are used to determine the army's damage value against that armour class."
As I said before, when the stack exceed 10 units, all units are taken in account to determine the army's damage value (cause it includes the penalty) but only the 10 most effective units will inflict damages (after penalty calculation).

freezy · Apr 30th 2021, 2:15am

To shed some light on this:

If 10 Interceptors and 10 Attack Bombers are in 1 stack and attack an army of planes, then the full damage values of the 10 Interceptors are used without any penalty. But the stack as a whole has a reduced damage efficiency because the damage values of the Attack Bombers are unused in this attack, they only contribute HP.

The army info popup tells you exactly how much damage your army will deal.
To quote myself from the other Thread: Just open the army info popup to check the army's damage value (damage potential column) against each armor class. Then open the same popup for the enemy army and check the percentages in the damage distribution column for each armor class. Then multiply those percentages with the damage numbers of your own stack, the result is the damage that each enemy armor class receives.

Example: if the enemy has 3 Infantry and 7 heavy tanks, then the heavy tanks would receive 70% of the damage that your army deals vs heavy armor, and the 3 Inf would receive 30% of the damage your army deals vs. unarmored. And how much damage your army deals against each armor class is determined by its 10 strongest damage values against each class and listed in the damage potential column.

You can also check out the Combat article in the CoW Wiki, it explains the calculation in more detail.

Merlin Pin-Pin · Apr 30th 2021, 3:36am

Got it !
I read your post as I just left another topic Hornetkeeper created and in which he explains combat mechanics.
It's all clear now. Thanks guys.

Hornetkeeper · Apr 30th 2021, 6:42am

Merlin Pin-Pin wrote:

What I understand from second quote: As there are more than 10 units in your stack all units will be taken in account for the damage calculation, only the 10 interceptors will inflict damages but the bombers will be taken in account as the will apply a damage penalty to your interceptors.

Second quote is for nerds and may not be the easiest to understand. Please follow quote 1 or try reading the text below and hope you get it this time

Quote 2 does actually sound like it's against quote 1, but it's the exact same thing said a different, more detailed way.

What quote 1 says is that the top 10 units against an armour class determine the damage of the army against that armour class.
But that doesn't mean only 10 units contribute to the fight.
If I have 10 infantry and 10 anti tank guns, their damage values against infantry are those of the 10 infantry, their damage values against tanks those of the 10 anti-tanks.
This means that if I get attacked by tanks and infantry the defensive damage of 10 infantry will be used against the infantry and the defense of 10 AT guns against the tanks.
The damage efficiency is not reduced because of the army size limit.
If you fight an army a part of your army receives the full damage of the enemy, multiplied by what fraction of your army the part is.
So if 1/4 of your army is infantry and you fight, the enemy damage value vs. infantry multiplied by 1/4 is used against your infantry.

Now that you hopefully understood it, I'll return to the first example.
As the enemy army is part tanks and part infantry your 10 infantry won't do their full damage against the enemy infantry and your AT guns against enemy tanks.

Instead, if the enemy army is half tanks, only half of the damage of your 10 AT guns will be used against those tanks.
And if half the enemy army is the infantry, again, only half of the damage of your 10 infantry will be used against those.
This is NOT a damage reduction because of army size. You probably misinterpreted it as that in quote 2. Instead, this damage reduction is used even if the armies are under 10 units, the difference is not in that.

If the army size limit wasn't a thing, the damage of the 10 infantry AND the 10 anti tank guns would be used against the enemy infantry. That would then be multiplied by 1/2 if only half the enemy army is infantry, and then used against those infantry.
The army size limit is a thing tho, so only the top 10 units against that armour class (the 10 infantry in this case) are used to deal damage to that armour class. So, only the damage of the 10 infantry is used, and still has to be multiplied by 1/2 afterwards.

Similarly, the damage of the 10 AT guns AND the 10 infantry would be used against the tanks. But as the army size limit is a thing, only the top 10 units against an armour class deal damage to that armour class. In this case only the 10 AT guns are used to deal damage to tanks.

Oh, I see you understood it from freezy post now;)
Btw @freezy. Wanna change the tooltip for 10+ unit armies to something less misleading? Like "Not all units can fight because the army extends the army size"
I used to get players in Help chat confused over this every day. Couldn't convince them that the popup isn't entirely right. Lol.

freezy · Apr 30th 2021, 4:14pm

Well technically it is always a reduction in damage efficiency for the whole army as soon as more than 10 units are in an army (no exception).

Let's say you have 10 Mechanized Inf and 10 Medium Tanks in your stack and you fight against a stack of 50% Infantry and 50% Armored Cars. Now your 10 Mechanized Infs deal their damage against the Infantry (but multiplied by 50%) and your 10 Medium Tanks deal their damage against the Armored Cars (but multiplied by 50%).
But Mechanized Infs also have decent damage values against light armor, while Medium tanks also have decent damage values against unarmored, and those damage values would remain unused in this fight. That means the damage efficiency of the whole army is below 100%.

Now split your stack into 2 stacks of 5 Mechanized Inf and 5 Medium Tanks and to the same again. In this case for each stack your 5 Mechanized Inf and your 5 Medium Tanks will deal their damage against Infantry (but multiplied by 50%) and the same 5 Mechanized Inf and 5 Medium Tanks will also deal their damage against the Armored Cars (but multiplied by 50%). In this case no damage in the stacks is wasted as all units contribute to damage vs all armor classes, and the damage efficiency remains at 100%.

Of course splitting stacks also results in more defensive damage taken, so all of this has to be balanced. Sometimes its smarter to keep your troops in a big stack to lower damage taken, sometimes its smarter to split to maximize damage output.

But I agree that the description may be a bit misleading.

AMG Morgan · Jun 2nd 2021, 9:15pm

Very good guide I would like to add 2 more tips

Tip 1: Always have more fighters than bombers bombers are good. but without fighters escort they are useless. so always have more fighters, and generally you fighters should always be level ahead of your bombers.

Tip 2: mix your planes with your bombers it saves you so much resources. for example if your using sp artillery then you will use tactical bombers. and if your using rocket artillery you use attack bomber. the same goes for artillery don't invest in both of them, this is the better and cost efficient way.

AMG Morgan · Jun 3rd 2021, 6:16pm

Hornetkeeper wrote:

If you have a large stack you don't want it destroyed, so you make sure you have every counter. That leads to the stacks being slow and easy to go around, which is why large stacks aren't the "meta".

I will have to disagree with this a good player with good economy and with large stack is nearly unbeatable. and very hard to defeat since he's economy is so big and he will able cover large fronts. for the speed you can use planes anyone that's gets behide your lines you destroy them with planes.

BMfox · Jun 3rd 2021, 6:46pm

AMG Morgan wrote:

Hornetkeeper wrote:

If you have a large stack you don't want it destroyed, so you make sure you have every counter. That leads to the stacks being slow and easy to go around, which is why large stacks aren't the "meta".

I will have to disagree with this a good player with good economy and with large stack is nearly unbeatable. and very hard to defeat since he's economy is so big and he will able cover large fronts. for the speed you can use planes anyone that's gets behide your lines you destroy them with planes.

If someone has large stacks you can just ignore them and move around with fast units and take out his cities and resource provinces. Without his cities and resources he won't be able to make anymore units. Large stacks have bad SDBE, so you can beat them with a smaller stack on defense in a terrain where you get a bonus. Once it's trapped in melee battle you bombard it with artillery.

AMG Morgan · Jun 3rd 2021, 7:00pm

There is another stack that forces YOU to attack it basically consists of anti tank, infantry and artillery. this stack is not good offensive wise so bomb the enemy and then force it to attack you. and this stack uses mostly goods and foods meaning. you will have alot of oil for your industry and for your planes and for fast units just use planes.

BMfox · Jun 3rd 2021, 7:02pm

AMG Morgan wrote:

There is another stack that forces YOU to attack it basically consists of anti tank, infantry and artillery. this stack is not good offensive wise so bomb the enemy and then force it to attack you. and this stack uses mostly goods and foods meaning. you will have alot of oil for your industry and for your planes and for fast units just use planes.

In that composition you can easily beat that stack with rocket artillery as those are all unarmored units. Also it doesn't have any AA so tactical bombers should do nicely too. 10 rocket artillery, protected by 10 infantry and a stack of 10 tactical bombers and it's gone in no time.

AMG Morgan · Jun 3rd 2021, 7:13pm

I did not include aa because if someone is using this stackthey most likely have air superiority

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